


always where i need to be

by weasleytook



Category: Revenge (TV)
Genre: F/M, Forgiveness, Friendship, Future Fic, Romantic Friendship, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleytook/pseuds/weasleytook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She may not be where she wants to be, but she's always where she needs to be. At least that's what she thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	always where i need to be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hardlygolden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardlygolden/gifts).



Emily leaves The Hamptons without a word, not to Nolan, not to anyone. Certainly, he most know it’s coming, now that Conrad and Victoria are rotting away in prison, and Jack and Amanda have departed to their new life in Oregon, and Charlotte is in college in the city, there’s nothing left there for her anymore.   
  
Except Nolan. There is always Nolan. And she feels the tiniest pang of guilt as she gets on the plane, for all that she owes him and how she hasn’t bothered to say goodbye. But she knows – or hopes – that he will understand. The day before, he poured his heart out to her, just seconds from telling her he is in love with her, before Emily told him she was exhausted and they’d talk tomorrow. He hadn’t needed to say it anyway, she knows it already, and it terrifies her.   
  
She needs out of there, now that her work is done. She needs to think – to catch her breath, really – to figure out what her future is. She doesn’t even know who she is anymore, Amanda Clarke or Emily Thorne or someone new.   
  
She just needs time.   
  
\+   
  
She spends the first six months in Spain trying not to think about what she’s left behind, but it’s impossible. They’re always on her mind, no matter how hard she tries to forget them.   
  
There’s Charlotte. Her sister, her only blood relative left if you don’t count the a mother who seems to have vanished into thin air. A sister that she barely got to know when she had the chance and the sister whose family she had destroyed. Charlotte lost Declan when he followed his brother west, and her only family left, Daniel, is so single-mindedly focused on rebuilding the Grayson name that he seems to have lost sight of his sister.   
  
Then there’s Nolan. The friend who is more honest with her than anyone had ever been. The friend who is loyal to the end no matter what the cost. The word _friend_ didn’t even begin to cover it. It was always a difficult relationship for her to define and still is, maybe even more so now that she is away from him.   
  
She doesn’t worry about Jack and Amanda, they’re happy, safe, and they have each other. But Nolan and Charlotte are completely alone.   
  
Emily can’t bring herself to call or write or even Google their names, but she also can’t go a day with thinking about them. It’s almost funny that for the first time in her adult life, she’s actually thinking about someone other than herself.   
  
For six whole months, she just tries to figure out who she is and learn how to let go.   
  
But letting go is something she’s never been good at.   
  
\+   
  
She starts to watch them from afar. Nolan is easier to keep track of, since his name is constantly in the press for something. Charlotte is less so, and she imagines her little sister is trying to keep a low profile after watching the Grayson name get trampled in the media so much.   
  
She’s still able to keep tabs on her and knows she’s doing well at NYU. Charlotte’s changed her last name to Clarke now that it’s okay to be a Clarke again.   
  
Nolan has rebuilt NolCorp using assets gained from Grayson Global, and when the new NolCorp’s stock goes public, she buys in without hesitation. Not under the name Amanda or Emily, of course; she’s not ready for Nolan to find her just yet.   
  
\+   
  
Emily sends Charlotte gifts for her birthday and for Christmas. Never attaches a note or a card or lets her know where they come from, but she imagines that Charlotte can easily figure it out.   
  
She wants to be a good sister, but since it was her fault that everyone Charlotte loved was taken away from her, she can’t imagine that forgiveness will come easily.   
  
She just hopes Charlotte won’t turn out like she did.   
  
\+   
  
Emily reads a lot about Nolan over the next couple years, but it’s mostly business talk. How he’s able to save his company from complete takeover, how he’s able to use the Grayson assets without tarnishing his own name, how he’s basically a younger, better looking Bill Gates, including the vast amounts of money he pours into philanthropic projects.   
  
She’s happy for him, and she thinks that maybe he’s better off without her anyway.   
  
But there’s never anything in these stories about his personal life, and she wonders if he’s just keeping it private, or if maybe all the achievements in the world don’t make you any less lonely.   
  
She tries to laugh off those thoughts, thinking she’s only projecting her own feelings onto someone she hasn’t even spoken to in two years. Getting her vengeance has left her lonelier than ever before.   
  
\+   
  
She has an e-mail alert set up for any news featuring Nolan’s name and that’s how she finds out he’s been arrested. It is late afternoon in France but still early in the States, so apparently what Nolan woke up to that morning was the FBI at his door.   
  
There is a long list of charges being brought against him for fraud and embezzlement, and she knows without even looking at the evidence that it can’t possibly be true. Nolan is no angel, but his crimes have always been helping the people he loves and not bilking innocent strangers out of their life savings.   
  
She doesn’t hesitate to book the first flight from Paris to New York. If someone is trying to destroy Nolan, there’s a good chance it’s because of her, and she owes Nolan way too much to ever let that happen.   
  
\+   
  
Long gone are the blonde waves that would make her familiar to people from her Hamptons past. Her hair is reddish brown and styled into a short bob now. Her passport says Cecelia, after her paternal grandmother, and she wears glasses while she’s in the city, hoping to avoid recognition.   
  
Her first plan is to break into the NolCorp offices, but all of the pertinent files have been seized, so even if she could get past the security system – and she’s sure she could – she wouldn’t find much anyway.   
  
If Nolan weren’t locked up, this is where he’d come in. He’d be able to hack into anything, including the FBI, to find out what evidence they had on him. So instead she hires a hacker she finds out about through some less than savory channels, someone who goes by the name of NinjaDude33. Of course, NinjaDude33 turns out to be a nineteen year old girl who looks closer to fifteen.   
  
“You’re NinjaDude33?”   
  
The girl shrugs her shoulders and dumps her messenger bag on to the couch of Emily’s hotel suite. “When you’re a girl in my world, either two things happen. Guys just want to bang you or they treat you like you’re a dumb little girl. So I let them think I’m a guy named Ben. That’s why I don’t meet a lot of people in real life. Unless they’re paying me like you.”   
  
“Fair enough.” She understands. It’s pretty common to be underestimated when you look like the girl next door.   
  
“My real name is Jenny.”   
  
Emily shakes her hand firmly and replies, “I’m Cecelia. Listen, before we get started, what I am asking you to do is very illegal and could get both of us put in prison for a very long time. But I assure you, it will be very worth your while if you can pull it off.”   
  
The girl shrugs like Emily just asked to borrow her shoes and replies, “The only way we go to prison is if I get caught, and I have never been caught.”   
  
“Okay then, let’s get to it.”   
  
They stay up all night and into the next day hacking into the FBI’s database and only survive thanks to a constant stream of coffee and room service. Emily is a little surprised at how easy Jenny makes it look, even though she knows it’s not.   
  
Whenever they take a break while files are decrypting or they just need to stretch, Emily discovers that Jenny is a chatterbox and in one night learns the girl’s whole life story. How she does this to make money for school and how she wants to go legit someday.   
  
When Jenny catches her smiling, she says, “You must be thinking of someone you love.”   
  
“Oh. Just. You remind me of someone, the younger female version of him, but you’re what I imagine he was like a long time ago.”   
  
“Nolan Ross, huh? I mean, I’m smart enough to figure out that we’re not just digging out this evidence on Nolan Ross for fun.”   
  
“Yeah, we were friends once. I – I don’t know if we still are.”   
  
Jenny grins over the coffee cup in her hand and takes a sip before saying, “If you’re doing all of this for him, then I’m pretty sure he can forgive you for whatever you did.”   
  
Emily smiles again as Jenny tells her all about how Nolan is like a God to people in her world, how he’s what so many of them want to be, and even if she wasn’t getting paid, she would have been happy to help out a hero.   
  
She misses Nolan, and being around Jenny makes her miss him more. Emily has had so little happiness and friendship in her life that it’s hard to recognize it when she does have it. Nolan always grounded her, kept her sane and even made her laugh sometimes.   
  
Emily knows exactly why her dad took the risk of financing NolCorp all those years ago, because just like Jenny, Nolan was young, brilliant, passionate and completely committed to his work.   
  
And what Nolan did for her, just to repay that one favor from her father, is why she’s here doing this.   
  
\+   
  
It takes them three days with very little sleep to figure out that all of the so-called evidence came from an employee in Nolan’s company, and then it takes another day for them to find out that the whistleblower was someone working for Emily’s old pal Aiden.   
  
And it takes Emily exactly four hours and twelve minutes to find out where Aiden is living and break into his apartment while he’s out.   
  
She sits in the dark waiting for about an hour until she gets a text from Jenny telling her that the GPS tracking they’ve been doing on his phone shows that he’s on the way back.   
  
When the door finally opens, and Aiden turns on the light, he doesn’t look at all surprised to see her.   
  
“Emily.”   
  
She cocks the hammer of the gun she’s been holding casually near her hip, and even though he’s smiling, he still takes a step back and puts his hands up.   
  
“Come any closer, and I won’t hesitate. And you know I don’t bluff. Now, can we talk about why you don’t look surprised to see me?”   
  
“Nolan.”   
  
“So did you do this to hurt Nolan, or did you do it to hurt me?”   
  
He takes a slight step forward, and she moves the gun so that it’s in front of her now, making him freeze in his tracks.   
  
“A little bit of both. I suppose my main goal was to flush you out of wherever you’ve been hiding.”   
  
“Well, you’ve done it. I guess you can clear Nolan’s name now, right?”   
  
Aiden looks as if he’s reaching for something in his coat pocket, so Emily dashes forward, nails him directly in the chest with her elbow, and knocks him to the floor. She straddles his torso and reaches in his coat to pull out the gun he had been reaching for and tosses it aside.   
  
“You did all this just to bring me here and shoot me?”   
  
His words come out stilted because she’s currently pressing most of her weight into his lungs. “No – I – I just wanted you to drop your gun so we could have a chat. An unarmed chat.”   
  
Emily rolls her eyes and presses the barrel of her gun into his neck. “Okay, let’s chat. I’ll go first. What did you want from me?”   
  
“I wanted you back. And if I couldn’t get you back, I wanted to destroy the person that means the most to you.”   
  
She wonders when she made it so obvious what Nolan meant to her, when she didn’t even realize it herself. Not back then anyway. Emily wants nothing more than to knock him out cold, but she’s not done yet.   
  
“You can’t have me. You will never have me. And the reason I ended it before was because you used Nolan as a pawn in your own schemes even after I told you to stay away from him.” Emily shakes her head in frustration, and the next part she says in utter disbelief, “You are such a fool.”   
  
“Emily – I just wanted to –”   
  
She pushes the gun at his neck until she knows it really hurts. “Shut up and listen. You’re going to take back all the evidence your little mole dug up, make sure Nolan is safe from any of these bullshit charges, and then you’re going to disappear. If you contact me or Nolan or anyone else I know again, I will exercise two of the following options. One, I will make sure every piece of evidence I have against you for every dirty deed you performed makes it to the proper authorities. Believe me when I say I’ve saved _everything_. Two, if you really piss me off, I will put a bullet in you and make sure no one ever finds the body.”   
  
Aiden makes a gurgling noise from the back of his throat that she takes to mean he accepts her terms, so she pulls the gun away slowly and continues, “Now, I’m going to stay with you every second of the day while you fix this mess. And if you even consider doing something stupid, it will be the last thing you do.”   
  
He nods, so she stands up. While he’s still recovering, she grabs the gun she had tossed aside earlier. Aiden is sitting up but still on the floor looking at her sadly, “I just want to know why you could never love me.”   
  
Emily thinks that there aren’t enough hours in the day to list off those reasons, so she tucks the spare gun in the back of her jeans and shrugs, “It’s me, Aiden. I’m not capable of that.”   
  
“Unless it’s for Nolan Ross.”   
  
There it is again. The implication that her love for Nolan is something beyond friendship. Aiden can see it, Jenny – a girl she didn’t even know for a day – could see it, but she wonders how she never could, not back when it would have mattered.   
  
“That is – or was – different,” is what she says.   
  
But it’s not what she means. Maybe it’s exactly what Jenny and Aiden are seeing.   
  
\+   
  
It takes a couple days, which is far too long to be spending every second with Aiden, but when all charges are dropped and the whistleblower recants her testimony, Nolan is free.   
  
Emily gets to do the one thing she’s been waiting for since she found out it was Aiden who had done this, and she knocks him out cold before leaving his apartment. She can’t guarantee he won’t ever be a pain in her ass again, but she’s got enough on him that she can destroy him without even blinking. And she lets him know that if he anything happens to her, all of her dirt on him is in the hands of someone who will happily send it to the FBI on her behalf.   
  
She tells Nolan’s lawyers that she wants to be the one to pick him up from jail, and as she waits outside the gates for him, her mind goes through fifteen different scenarios of how she should act or how he might react.   
  
Nolan comes through the gates, and he hasn’t changed a bit since she last saw him. He doesn’t look entirely surprised to see her there, but he does laugh. “This scenario seems familiar.”   
  
Emily laughs too, realizing that many years ago, it was Nolan who picked her up in a similar situation. It was a day that had entirely changed her life in so many ways.   
  
“Nolan –”   
  
“I should have figured it was you. Who else could get a guy cleared of these kinds of charges in just a matter of days?”   
  
“I always said I’d find a way to repay you for everything you did. I finally had my chance.”   
  
Nolan shoves his hands in his pockets and nods like he’s thinking of what he wants to say next. “Then consider the debt repaid. I’m sure you’ve already got your flight booked back to wherever the hell you’ve been.”   
  
He isn’t wrong. She plans on leaving first thing in the morning. It’s not that she doesn’t want to stay, she just doesn’t know how to.   
  
“I don’t know what to say.”   
  
“You could start with apologizing for leaving town and never saying goodbye. For leaving me and your sister without a word. For staying away for three years and only showing up when I got thrown in jail. That’s a start.”   
  
“Nolan. I can’t explain why I left, why I stayed gone.”   
  
Nolan looks away from her, like he doesn’t want to see her face when he says it. “It’s because you’re selfish. I – I loved you even though I really tried not to, and you knew it. You did this because it was easier on you. You did it for yourself, and you didn’t care who you hurt.”   
  
And there it is, all laid out in front of her, what she’s known all along but hates admitting. She has a lot of flaws, but that is the one that always holds her back. Even when she gives a little, like saving Nolan from ruin, she is never able to give all.   
  
“Can we just go somewhere and talk? Please?”   
  
Nolan points behind her at the car coming up the road. “Not now, Ems, I have another ride.”   
  
Emily recognizes the driver immediately. Her hair is a little different, and she’s matured into an even more beautiful woman in the past three years, and the thought of all she has missed hurts her heart. “Charlotte?”   
  
“Yeah, she’s been interning at NolCorp. She’s turned out to be incredibly smart at business, and she’s handled all of the drama so well. It’s a shame you won’t stick around to see it yourself.”   
  
She looked at him, slightly stunned and says quietly, “So, she’s okay? You’re both okay?”   
  
“Didn’t think we could survive without you, huh? I’m not at all sorry to tell you that we’ve done just fine with you gone.”   
  
Not many people have ever been able to make her cry, but Nolan has before and she can feel the tears welling up now.   
  
Charlotte rolls down the window of the car, and Emily can see the hurt and disappointment on her face. “Charlotte –”   
  
She ignores her and looks at Nolan instead, “Is she staying?”   
  
Nolan responds with a shake of his head, so Charlotte turns back to her sister, “Until you can be bothered to stick around, we have nothing to talk about.”   
  
He gives Emily a smirk and a shrug before getting in the passenger seat of Charlotte’s car. They don’t leave right away, and Nolan stares out the window at her, looking more sad now than angry.   
  
“Nolan – for what it’s worth – if anyone could ever make me stay in one place, it would be you. And Charlotte, I am sorry.”   
  
Neither of them speak to her, but there’s a brief moment when Emily thinks that they believe her, that they understand what she just can’t say.   
  
It’s the closest she’s come to telling anyone she loves them in a very long time.   
  
Because she does love him. Seeing him again made it hit her all at once. The one person that had always been and would always be on her side, even when she made him furious, that was Nolan. That was love.   
  
She thinks back to something her dad told her when she was little. That loving someone is caring more about their happiness than your own and now that she can focus on something other than revenge, she finally understands it. Emily wants Nolan to be happy, even if it means she shouldn’t be in his life again.   
  
That is love.   
  
\+   
  
She goes back to Paris, not because it’s where she wants to be but because she just can’t bring herself to stay in New York. She wants to fight to hang on to Nolan and Charlotte, but she needs more time. Time to forgive herself in hopes that they can forgive her too.   
  
But things are different this time around. When she sends Charlotte a birthday gift, she signs the card now. She knows it’s not much, but it’s a start.   
  
She begins to e-mail Nolan regularly, and though it takes him a month to start responding, he eventually does. She also fulfills a promise she made to Jenny by convincing Nolan to give her a job, a legitimate and totally legal one.   
  
In April, nearly eight months after she last saw him, Nolan sends her an e-mail telling her that Charlotte is graduating college in a month.   
  
He doesn’t tell her she should come or even that Charlotte wants her to, he lets her make that decision on her own.   
  
It’s one of the easiest decisions she’s ever made. Emily doesn’t know if she even deserves to be happy after all the hell she’s put people through, but she’s tired of being alone, and she’s tired of only thinking of her own pain and not how much it hurt Nolan and Charlotte for her to abandon them. She doesn’t know if they even want her back, but it’s time to find out.   
  
Charlotte had everything taken away from her but is maturing into someone smart and strong and kind, instead of hard-hearted and broken like Emily. They had never even gotten a chance to know each other as sisters and Emily swears to herself that she’ll do whatever it takes to change that.   
  
And Nolan. He wasn’t the idealized fairytale ending that Jack offered, but she knew that was never realistic. Her happy ending with Aiden had was cut off because of how he treated Nolan. It had taken her nearly four years to figure out what she should have known then.   
  
He _loved_ her. Not just as a friend or an ally, but something so much deeper than that. Nolan had sacrificed so much for her, and not just out of some obligation to her father, but because he cared for her more than he cared for anyone or anything. She knew that then.   
  
And she loved him too, and maybe she had for a long time, but the prospect of giving herself over to someone that completely had been too terrifying to even contemplate. That’s the thing she’s only recently come to understand.   
  
So she packs her bags, all of them, and ships her things off to an apartment in New York she’s purchased, and she makes her plans to conquer those fears once and for all.   
  
\+   
  
She spots Nolan from behind easily. That familiar blonde hair, the clothes that match but almost don’t, the slim line of his shoulders. There’s a seat empty next to him, so she stands at the end of the aisle and says, “Is this seat taken?”   
  
It’s not her best line, but it’s the only thing she can think to say.   
  
Nolan smiles and directs her to sit down, and as she takes her place next to him, he says, “How long are you in town this time?”   
  
She breathes in slowly then answers, “As long as you want me to be. I got an apartment on the upper west side.”   
  
He does this sort of half-smug, half-impressed smirk and responds with, “Hmmm.”   
  
And that’s all that is said while they watch the very long graduation ceremony, and though neither of them are big enough saps to cry at Charlotte crossing the stage, they can’t help but steal a glance at each other and smile.   
  
They find Charlotte after the ceremony, and Nolan gives her congratulatory hugs, but quickly dismisses himself to give them a moment alone with a promise to see both of them later at the party.   
  
“A party huh?”   
  
“Yeah, Nolan is having it on the roof of the NolCorp building. Just some of my college friends and people from NolCorp that I’ve worked with. You should come.”   
  
Emily nods, and she wants to say so much but she finds the words caught in her throat, so she just sputters out, “I am so sorry, Charlotte.”   
  
Charlotte bites her lower lip, and it’s not hard to tell that she’s holding back tears, “You know. I forgave you a long time ago for what you did to my family – my other family. Nolan explained everything to me after you left, showed me all of David’s journals that you left behind, so I get why you did it. That and a _lot_ of therapy helped me forgive you for that. But – I don’t forgive you for leaving. I lost my mother, the only father I ever knew, my brother e-mails me once a week but I hardly ever see him. He couldn't even show for my graduation because he's at a business meeting. And then in one day I lose the sister I thought I had, and my real sister leaves. I don’t forgive you for leaving me alone like that.”   
  
Emily doesn’t even realize she’s crying until the tears are already halfway down her face. “I know. I don’t have any good reasons, except that I’ve been selfish and scared, and I want to change all that. Nolan told me you’re staying on with his company for a while, and so I’m coming back to New York for good. I hope that you’ll give me another chance and maybe someday forgive me.”   
  
Charlotte gives her a slight smile and then gives her a brief hug before backing away and saying, “Come to the party tonight, that can be your first step. Besides, I know Nolan really wants you there.”   
  
Her sister’s little smile turns into a knowing smirk and a wink. Emily is not a person blushes easily, or usually at all, but she comes awfully close to it.   
  
“I’ll see you tonight. I promise.”   
  
Charlotte gives her a squeeze on the arm before running off to meet some friends, and it’s the first time Emily feels genuinely hopeful.   
  
\+   
  
If she hadn’t spent years going to parties surrounded by complete strangers, this whole night would be a nightmare. The only people she knows here are Charlotte, Nolan and, Jenny. She doesn’t know how to introduce herself (eventually going with ‘a friend of the family’), and all she really wants to do is talk to Nolan alone.   
  
Unfortunately, when you’re the host of the party, there’s not much alone time. But she figures he’s been patiently waiting for her to return for almost four years, the least she can do is wait on him. So she makes the most of it, meeting Charlotte’s friends and co-workers and even talks to Jenny for a while, finding out that she’s employed part-time by NolCorp and attending school on a scholarship that Nolan named for Emily’s father after his name was cleared.   
  
Emily thinks that introducing Jenny to Nolan is just one good deed on a short list that will never balance out all the dirty deeds she’s done.   
  
Finally, when all the guests are gone, and she’s made plans to have dinner with Charlotte the day after next, she’s left alone on the roof with Nolan. He’s standing near the ledge looking out at the city when she walks up beside him.   
  
“Need help cleaning up?”   
  
“No, just one benefit of being crazy disgusting filthy rich, remember?”   
  
“Yeah. I just thought…icebreaker?”   
  
Nolan laughs and turns so that he’s facing her now. “You were always terrible at breaking the ice.”   
  
Emily nods in agreement and continues, “I’m really bad at segues too, so forgive me when I tell you that – I don’t even know where to start this conversation.”   
  
“How about 2013? When you left without a word and after everything I said to you.”   
  
“I know. And I knew what you wanted to say, what you would have said eventually, but I was scared.”   
  
His face drops a little, and she hates that sad look, especially because she’s the cause of it. “Scared of me? Scared that I would hurt you? How many times, Ems, how many times I have put myself on the line to help you – and that you would even think I _could_ hurt you.”   
  
She looks away from him and puts her hands on the railing, because she feels like she’s going to crumple at any moment. “Do you think my dad married my mom thinking she would ever hurt him? Do you think he ever expected Victoria to do what she did? No one ever expects to be hurt when they fall in love.”   
  
“It’s not like you loved me back, not like that. You could have stayed anyway. Been here for your sister and me.”   
  
Her heart sinks. He has no idea how she feels. Of course he doesn’t, she didn’t even know it herself until recently, and all she has ever done was push him away when he got too close.   
  
“I did.”   
  
“You did what?”   
  
She squeezes her eyes shut and listens to sounds of the city around her. Its down to the proverbial now or never, and if she doesn’t say it now, then she might as well leave and never come back. Emily can’t remember ever feeling as vulnerable as she does in this moment, but she knows she owes him this. So she opens her eyes and looks up to make eye contact with him.   
  
“I loved you. I – I still do.”   
  
Nolan laughs, and it’s not exactly the reaction she was expecting or hoping for. Not that she had thought this out at all, which was definitely something new for her. Usually she would have anticipated every possible outcome already.   
  
“I’m sorry, Ems, I just – all this time wasted because you were –”   
  
“Selfish, stubborn, stupid – take your pick. I know that I can’t take any of that back, and I can probably never apologize enough, and if you just want to be friends, then that’s great. I just don’t want to go another four years or another four days without you around.” She tries to read his face to figure out what he’s thinking, but he’s picked up a few things from her and isn’t showing his hand at all. So her voice wavers when she asks, “If that’s okay with you?”   
  
He barely lets her finish the question before he leans in and presses his lips against hers. There’s nothing tentative about this. It’s a declaration in the form of a kiss. A statement. He hasn’t stopped loving her and never will, and that’s what he’s saying when his arms go to her waist to pull her closer.   
  
The kiss deepens, and her hands go to his face and then his shoulders, and it hits her how very different this is from any other kiss she’s ever had. Because it’s real, and it comes with hope for a real future, and there’s no sad ending waiting for them when it’s done.   
  
She breaks it off after a minute and gives him a relieved smile, “I guess that’s a yes.”   
  
Nolan leans in so that his forehead is touching hers, and he sighs. “If only you knew how hard I tried to get over you.”   
  
Emily trails her hands down his arms and then grabs his hands with hers. She feels happy, and more so than that, she feels like this is a feeling that could last, like maybe someone like her is actually capable of being happy.   
  
She kisses him this time because she knows this is it. This is the person who loves her for all of her best qualities and all of her absolute worst ones, and that is never going to change.   
  
This time, she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Yuletider! I love you for loving Emily and Nolan and Charlotte, and I hope that you enjoy this and have a very happy New Year!
> 
> Thanks to my brilliant and wonderful beta, because this would have been an actual mess without you.


End file.
